I always try too hard to make clever post titles, so I didn’t bother this time.\u00a0 I also have an increasing tendency to write very long, deep posts every month or two rather than writing more frequent posts every few days.\u00a0 It’s frustrating to not write for so long, but it’s also frustrating to write something that seems extraneous or forced.\u00a0 I wrote two very short articles for the Saroma-Palmer Sister City Newsletter yesterday, very quickly because they were already weeks past the date I had promised them by.\u00a0 They read like 5th grade book reports.\u00a0 I’m not ashamed of them, but not as proud of them as I am of the writing on other parts of this blog.\u00a0 I guess in the end, I mainly write for myself, and if I ever choose to become a writer as a profession, I’ll have to learn how to do it for others.\u00a0 For example, last years post about my Papua New Guinea experience was written over several days, with a lot of editing and careful thought, but also with a lot of inspiration.\u00a0 I browsed back to it on my iPhone on the way to Papua New Guinea a few weeks ago and was impressed with what I had written.\u00a0 It took me back to that first experience and made me newly excited for the next.\u00a0 Hopefully I can keep doing that.<\/p>\n
I just talked to my uncle Andy on the phone.\u00a0 I sent him a postcard from Papua New Guinea with a picture of a fire eater on it.\u00a0 There’s a guy crunching down on a burning stick like it’s a loaf of french bread.\u00a0 I’ll miss seeing Andy when I return to Fairbanks next month for Chris and Hosanna’s wedding.\u00a0 He’ll be cycling around southern France with his wife.\u00a0 It made me nostalgic once again for travelling.\u00a0 Keep in mind that I’ve been back from a two week trip to Papua New Guinea for all of a week, and I am living in Japan.\u00a0 You’d think I’d had enough travelling.\u00a0 But it’s addicting.\u00a0 I think as one extends the lifestyle that you find while travelling, creating loose and distant yet numerous relationships, being itinerant becomes a kind of permanence.\u00a0 It almost becomes kind of a cycle.\u00a0 With no material or social anchors, (house, wife, kids, mortgage, land, real job) it becomes very easy to jump at chances when they come.\u00a0 But constantly moving around pursuing those opportunities doesn’t allow those kinds of anchors to get set.\u00a0 So it perpetuates.\u00a0 I feel a little bit fluxed sometimes, because I don’t see my current lifestyle leading anywhere that people expect lives to lead.\u00a0 I can’t see more than a few months down the road, so I don’t plan further than that.\u00a0 Now, concerning long-terms things like an IRA, I suppose I could use some work.\u00a0 But for now, I don’t feel the need to reach out into the future and grab at things.\u00a0 The future will come to me.\u00a0 I actually surprised myself in an messaging exchange the other day with my friend Jacob, who is likewise postponing adulthood, but in a much more adult way, as a graduate student in Middle Eastern Security Studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland. His blog, “The One Seventh Report” is linked to at the right.<\/p>\n
9:03 PM\u00a0<\/span>me<\/span>: I am delaying my entry into the workforce<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>but I am paying off debt, sort of<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>but I am not gaining any valuable skills<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>well I guess japanese<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>but damn sometimes I laugh at how cush I have it here<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/span>Jacob<\/span><\/span>: I was going to say, you’re delaying your entry into the workforce by… working?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>getting paid?<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
9:04 PM\u00a0<\/span>me<\/span>: hahahahahaha<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>it’s funny that you have to correct that<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>I don’t particularly see it that way<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>I often don’t feel like an adult<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n
\u00a0\u00a0<\/span>or even a real person<\/span><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I surprised myself with that.\u00a0 Jacob had to remind me that I have a job.\u00a0 He had to remind me that I am making money, like any other productive member of society.\u00a0 I suppose he might see me similarly to the way I see him – someone who is pursuing a productive course in life that can be respected and admired.\u00a0 Maybe I don’t always see things that way.<\/p>\n
Well, this post is turning into a musing on things other than Papua New Guinea, so I’ll have to post that in the next update.\u00a0 As it stands, the trip to Alaska is fast coming.\u00a0 May 1st will be my last day of work until May 20th.\u00a0 During that time, I plan to drive to Sapporo, stay there one night with Yoshie, take an overnight ferry from Otaru to Niigata, stay in Niigata one night, meeting friends and colleagues from last year, then take the bullet train to Narita Airport in Tokyo, and try to catch a standby flight to Minneapolis on May 5th.\u00a0 I’ll hang out with Nate, maybe run to Omaha, and definitely see the new Star Trek movie on May 8th, perhaps the best stroke of luck ever that I am there for that.\u00a0 The evening of the 8th I have a first class one way award ticket on Alaska Airlines to Anchorage.\u00a0 The 9th there will be a potluck in Palmer at the Sister City Church where I will give an update on Saroma and my job there to the Sister City Committee and related people.\u00a0 Sunday is Mothers’ Day and I will relax with my mother.\u00a0 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday will be serious workdays.\u00a0 Meeting with principals of all of the sister city schools, the mayor, the superintendent, the school board, visiting high school Japanese classes, Saroma-Palmer exchange student meetings, and presenting to students at Pioneer Peak about Saroma.\u00a0 I might even wear a tie.\u00a0 Thursday the 14th I will drive to Fairbanks with Mom and Monte and hang.\u00a0 Chris Green and Hosanna Tolman will be married on Saturday, May 16th.\u00a0 I’ll technically be a groomsman, although a poorly groomed man.\u00a0 On the 17th, I will drive my trusty Subaru back down the Parks to Palmer, finally returning it home after it decided to spend the winter in Fairbanks after blowing its timing belt last August on the way to Chena Hot Springs.\u00a0 4:15 AM on the 18th I will hop on a 747 heading for Taipei, then onto Tokyo, and back to Saroma, in bed by 10 PM the next night, ready for work on May 20th.\u00a0 All this has worked out pretty well, and together, with ferries, trains and them infernal flying machines, is a measly $1,300.\u00a0 I’m looking forward to it, especially the opportunity to reconnect and strengthen some of the sister school relationships.\u00a0 I sometimes don’t feel particularly qualified to act as a representative of Palmer, since I have absolutely no idea what is going on there.\u00a0 It’s like I’m one of those exiled Iraqis who fed the US bad intelligence prior to the war – they hadn’t lived in their own country for 20 years.\u00a0 I haven’t lived in Palmer for seven years now.\u00a0 While I’ve been back semi-frequently, a few times a year at least, I can’t keep up with all of the changes of people and landscape and life.\u00a0 I need to go home and conduct research on my hometown from abroad.<\/p>\n
One last thing to tie it all together.\u00a0 I’ve been to many countries, but I’ve only been to a few twice.\u00a0 Those are the United States (hey, I came back, didn’t I?), France, Italy, Japan, and Papua New Guinea.\u00a0 Russia technically counts as well, but as it was only Vladivostok for a total of 9 or 10 days, I won’t count it.\u00a0 France and Italy also don’t fit the mold because they were breeze-through countries that I never developed a lasting connection to. \u00a0 That leaves the US, Japan, and PNG.\u00a0 I’d honestly say that Alaska, Hokkaido, and the Waria Valley are the three places on this planet that I feel the most connected to.\u00a0 I happened to collect several kilograms of rocks from the bed of the Waria River at Pema a few weeks ago.\u00a0 Green conglomerates, smooth white balls of quartz, gnarled, purple metamorphics.\u00a0 I like them.\u00a0 I’m thinking that this summer, I’m going to pave a small doorstep to the ALT house here in Saroma, and ring it with rocks from this area of Hokkaido that I’ve found along the Okhotsk Sea and in the mountains, rocks from Papua New Guinea that I’ve found in the Waria River, and rocks that I intend to find in Palmer, in the Matanuska and Chugach and Talkeetna Mountains.\u00a0 A tangible synthesis of my favorite pieces of the planet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I always try too hard to make clever post titles, so I didn’t bother this time.\u00a0 I also have an increasing tendency to write very long, deep posts every month or two rather than writing more frequent posts every few days.\u00a0 It’s frustrating to not write for so long, but it’s also frustrating to write […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4,12,15,21,22,24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alaska","category-america","category-family","category-japan","category-sapporo","category-saroma","category-tokyo"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seanholland.net\/seanmisen\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}